Roses Manor, Weston Chapter 7
“Has Bradley shown up yet?” James asked a couple hours later as he came upstairs from the gym to where Gabriella, Amelia, and Madelyn were working in the living room.
“No,” Gabriella said. “Why? What time was he on?”
“Eight.”
It was a little before nine now. “I’ll call him,” James said.
“I’ll do it,” Gabriella offered before the words fully registered in her head.
James looked at her for a second, then nodded. “Thanks,” he said, instead of whatever else he clearly wanted to.
She called and got no answer. At nine-thirty, she called again and, again, she got his clipped voicemail greeting.
“Hey, it’s Gabriella,” she said, pacing at the top of the stairs as she spoke. “Just checking in, you were on at eight this morning. Hopefully everything’s okay? Um, call when you get this.”
She hung up, peering through the frosted glass of the front door. “He wouldn’t just quit,” Amelia said as she checked her own phone.
“No, he’d write up a six-page resignation letter and staple it to my forehead,” James said. “Where the fuck is he? Madelyn, did he say anything to you? I mean, yesterday, when…”
Madelyn looked like she wanted the floor to swallow her as she reluctantly looked up at James. “Not about quitting today, no,” she said after a pause.
That left a whole lot of other topics of conversation on the table, and Gabriella could see that James had picked up on her careful wording. But he didn’t ask her to elaborate, instead just checking his phone yet again.
Bradley wasn’t there by the time the morning meeting started at ten and Gabriella could tell that James had long given up on staying more angry than worried. He’d tried Bradley’s phone at least three times by now too and it had gone straight to voicemail each time. Hopefully Bradley had just overslept and would come storming into the house at any moment, swearing and soaked from the sleet that was coming down.
After Madelyn went through the progress Gabriella had made in the game itself, James asked about the research, listening intently even as his gaze kept straying to the window.
“I’m still digging, but I’m honestly not even sure where to go with some of this,” Gabriella admitted, looking up at the social media screenshots on the display screen in front of them. She’d quickly put together a slideshow herself before the meeting so that she could display the screenshots she’d taken throughout her progress in the game, as well as the information Charlotte and Madelyn had dug up. “It’s a straightforward game, but I’m not sure it’ll stay like that. Based on the comments about hints and clues, there’s something more to it.”
“There’s nothing about this in Charlotte’s notes, but she wasn’t a player,” Madelyn added.
“Do you think there’s a physical element?” James asked. “The LLC is local, so maybe they expect you to do, like, what’s it called? Geocaching? Graham knows some of that stuff, maybe check with him when he gets here.”
“I haven’t seen anything about it,” Madelyn said, exchanging a glance with Gabriella. “But that sounds awful, if I’m being honest. Graham does that for fun?”
“What are the paranormal elements?” James asked. “That’s what’s getting me. This isn’t a knock at you, Mad. Or you, Gabs. But I don’t see the paranormal in here beyond the energy that killed the victims. Have you guys come across anything yet that makes this definitively one of ours?”
“Yes and no?” Madelyn said as Gabriella swallowed the unnecessarily defensive, We didn’t assign ourselves this case. “There’s one guy who got banished from the game and the lengths it went to ban him are beyond any technology I’ve ever heard of. But it’s so difficult to parse out where the tech ends and the magic begins.”
James nodded, but looked a little lost. “We’ll still solve it,” he said. “Even if it isn’t our standard thing.”
The cordless phone rang behind them and Gabriella moved to answer as James said, “Let’s wait until Graham gets here, then we can ask him about his passion for geocache. For now, let’s move on to the Derringer case.”
She picked up, assuming it was going to be Bradley swearing and maybe even apologizing over the line. “North Worcester County branch, Gabriella speaking. How can I help you?”
“Hi, is there a James there?”
The speaker was a young woman and Gabriella didn’t recognize her. “May I ask who’s calling?” she said.
“Sorry,” the woman said, clearly flustered. “Sorry, I mean… Does Bradley work there?”
“I can’t give out staff information on the phone,” Gabriella said. “Can you please just tell me what’s going on?”
James was looking over at her now, ignoring the monster on the screen beside him. “Sorry,” the woman said yet again. “Listen, I’m, um, I’m Nora. I live with Bradley Donahue, who I think works there? We were leaving for work earlier and he got hit by a car.”
Gabriella’s stomach dropped and her horror must have been obvious on her face, because everyone was staring now. “What?” James demanded.
“He was okay when the ambulance got there,” Nora said. “I mean, not okay, he got hit by a car. It was the guy upstairs, and the road was slushy, you know? He couldn’t stop in time, it’s not like he did it on purpose or something. But they took him and he was talking so…”
Nora trailed off and Gabriella waited as patiently as she could. “But he kept saying he had to call James,” Nora continued. “So does he work there, or…”
“Yeah,” Gabriella said quickly. “Yeah, you got the right branch. James is the captain here.”
“Oh, good!” Nora said. “I didn’t have your number, so I called the main headquarters and asked for Worcester? But I didn’t realize there were two, so I guess I called South Worcester first and they said they knew him, but he didn’t work there.”
“Yeah, he works here,” Gabriella said, temporarily disregarding the fact that Bradley’s roommates apparently knew about the Foundation. “You said he was okay?”
“I mean, for someone who got hit by a car, yeah,” Nora said. “I’m not a nurse or anything. But I know knees aren’t supposed to look like that.”
Nausea rose in her throat. “Thanks for letting us know,” Gabriella said, swallowing hard. “Are you with him?”
“No,” Nora said. “I stayed until the ambulance got there, but he said I should go to work. Honestly, he’s probably going to be pissed that I called you, but he was really adamant he needed to call so I wanted to help.”
“He can deal,” Gabriella said, and was pleasantly surprised when Nora laughed, though it was a little shaky.
“He told Derrick – um, the driver – to go the fuck away. Screamed at him? I guess? Yeah, he was screaming. And he did, but then I guess he realized he could get arrested because he came back, like, a minute later and Bradley started screaming at him again.”
If he was okay enough to swear at the neighbor, then he had to be better than the horrible possibilities in her mind despite Nora’s words. She hung up a second later. “That was Bradley’s roommate,” Gabriella said. “She said he was okay, but he’s at the hospital. Apparently he got hit by a car when they were leaving for work.”
“Jesus Christ,” Madelyn murmured.
“He’s okay?” James said, gripping the back of the chair beside him.
“Yeah, she said he was conscious and everything. And pissed at the driver.”
“Good,” James said. “Good. Um, I’m glad he’s okay. We were just figuring out the Market Basket thing, but if he’s not going to be here, we’ll postpone that. Did she say what happened?”
“The only thing she mentioned was that he probably broke his knee.”
“I’ll call him later and check in,” James said, his eyes darting around the room as though it was going to answer whatever question was on his mind. “Or her, did you get her number?”
“No, but it might be on the caller ID log.”
“Great. Yeah, that’s true. Um, so if we wait on Market Basket, we just have the Derringer today, and your video game. And I’ll check what else. Did she say anything about what the doctors think?”
“No, she said she wasn’t there with him.”
“Okay,” James said, nodding now as he looked over their heads and around the room. “So I guess… Mads and Gabbie, stay on course. He’s there alone?”
“I think so?” Gabriella said. “She said he was okay though.”
“Yeah, no, of course,” James said. “I’ll check in with him later. Let him focus on whatever it is he has to do. Graham gets in in about half an hour, so he’ll do Derringer and then I’ll just… Um, I’ll just…”
He glanced out the window at the slushy road outside. “Does anyone mind if I leave?”
Gabriella wasn’t sure she’d heard him right, but Amelia shook her head. “I’m sorry,” James said, already halfway across the room, grabbing his coat off the chair he’d draped it over this morning. “I just don’t feel right about him being there alone. I have my phone. Put off Market Basket until tomorrow, they’ll have a new problem to go with it by then, anyway. Call me if anything comes up. Amelia you’re in charge. Cancel whatever you want to. Cancel everything, have fun.”
He was out the front door almost before this list of instructions was over. The house was silent after he left. Gabriella tore her gaze from the door and looked toward Madelyn and Amelia, who were looking at each other thoughtfully. Then Amelia looked at Gabriella.
“Alright, how about you guys get to work on yours and I’ll try to make sense of Derringer for a little bit?”
